Garden at 69 Main Street, Nantucket
Description by Barbara Halsted, Kathy Stroz and Paula Henderson
The house and gardens at 69 Main Street (originally the Frederick Mitchell House, built ca. 1821-1833), from 1962 the Walter and Mary Ann Beinecke House and, since 1979, under the stewardship of Mrs. Mariann Appley, have been recognized as highly important and irreplaceable features of the Upper Main Street landscape. The well-preserved Late Federal period house is a reminder of the great wealth of Nantucket, derived from whaling in the 18th and early 19th centuries, while the small formal garden to the east, with its simple, formal layout, paired gazebos linked by a trellised arbor, handsome greenhouse and box-enclosed flower beds are northern versions of the ‘Colonial Revival Style’, which originated in the late 19th century but became especially fashionable with the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg by the Rockefellers from the 1930s. The two gazebos, especially, are clearly derived from Williamsburg ‘necessaries’, the outside privies that were distinctive features of the restored colonial gardens. In the early 1960s Walter Beinecke was the prime mover in saving and conserving historic Nantucket, which had and still has more pre-Civil War architecture than anyplace else in the United States. Beinecke was concerned about the inevitable changes that would be made to the island by the many tourists who came each summer. To help preserve the authenticity of the island, Beinecke purchased a number of historic properties and helped to establish the earliest conservation and preservation societies. Of special importance to Beinecke was the house at 69 Main Street, which became his family home. The gardens were then designed by Russell Pope in a style thought appropriate to the original house.
On an island where the gardens of even the most historic properties are regularly swept away by new owners, the survival of Walter Beinecke’s ‘Colonial Revival’ garden is something of a miracle, which can be attributed to the passion of current owner Mariann Appley, an accomplished gardener and long-time member and former President of the Nantucket Garden Club. Furthermore, the garden’s future is ensured by the Historic Preservation Easement that was created in 2018 in conjunction with the Nantucket Preservation Trust. Also protected are views into the garden, which has been recognized as a critical aesthetic feature of the Main Street landscape. This has been accomplished by requiring the owner (now and in the future) to keep the streetside hedges and shrubs at a low enough level to allow passers-by unrestricted views of the garden. In 2018, the garden received the Caroline A. Ellis Landscape Award from the Nantucket Preservation Trust.
Description of the garden:
Both the main garden on the east and the smaller and narrower garden on the west are entered through handsome white wooden gates ornamented with a ship’s wheel. On entering the east garden, one is immediately aware of the geometric divisions of the garden: the patio (with a door leading from the house into the garden) on the left; the rectangular grassed bed surrounded by gravel paths with a large armillary sphere at the center; the two gazebos linked by a trellised arbor on the right; and the glasshouse standing behind the white lily bed (enclosed by a low box hedge) and the smaller rose bed with David Austin roses at the back.
To the west of the house is a long, narrow, shade garden. Two beds, planted with ivy, hosta, rhododendron and other shrubs and trees (including a Japanese maple), flank a brick path that leads to a small patio behind the house. A fine wall fountain, consisting of a dolphin that drips water into a shell basin is set into a white trellis on the north wall of the patio. Apart from the summer floral display in various beds and containers and some spring and autumn flowering plants, the gardens of 69 Main Street look basically the same all year round. This is, of course, the essence of the early formal garden style, which relies on precisely laid out and shaped greenery (in grass, hedges, fir trees and shrubs) to emphasize and maintain the form and structure of the garden.
